


everything is softer and more beautiful

by thespacenico



Series: klancemas 2018 [6]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Christmas Lights, M/M, PINING KEITH, The Fool - Freeform, he is pining so hard, keith and lance prank adam, keith finally realizes he mayhaps has a small crush, lance doesn't admit it but he lets keith win, pidge is tired of their shenanigans, pidge: disappointed but not surprised, takashi why would you prank my boyfriend without me shirogane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-14 10:48:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16911510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thespacenico/pseuds/thespacenico
Summary: klancemas day six: christmas lights





	everything is softer and more beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> i am slowly getting more and more behind so sorry ashskjdhfj but anyway here is the next klance shenanigan for you guys to enjoy! i was feeling really soft writing this one and it probably shows

Adam snores a little from where he’s sprawled upright on the couch, his glasses sitting crooked on his nose. Keith and Lance stand over him, watching curiously.

Keith tilts his head. Lance squints.

“I can’t believe he made us get all the Christmas lights out of the storage room and then decided to take a nap on the couch,” he mutters.

“It’s not the first time,” Keith shrugs. “It’s starting to get dark anyway, so maybe it’s for the best. We never would’ve been able to put all of them up in time.”

They stare a little bit. Lance nudges one of the boxes on the floor beside them with his foot. “Seems like a shame we brought all this down here for nothing.”

“Real shame,” Keith nods.

They glance at each other. Back at Adam.

“He’s a heavy sleeper,” Lance says.

“Yep,” Keith answers.

Adam snores again in response.

“This is a pretty big room,” Lance observes.

Keith hums thoughtfully. “It could use a little redecorating.”

A pause. They glance at each other again.

Lance taps his chin. “He’ll know it was us.”

“Probably,” Keith agrees.

They look down at the boxes. At each other. Keith smirks and Lance grins.

“We’d better hurry,” Keith says, crouching down and pulling the flaps of the nearest box open.

Lance snickers as Keith starts hauling rolled-up strings of lights out of the box and passes him some. “I can’t wait to see his face.”

They both gather as many lights into their arms as they can carry and set off toward opposite ends of the room. Lance starts wrapping a string around the banister of the staircase while Keith carefully lays one on the mantelpiece over the fireplace. “I bet I can put up more lights than you.”

“We’re not making this into a competition, Lance,” Keith scoffs, moving on to one of the armchairs in the room as Lance moves up the stairs. “I take pranks on Adam very seriously.”

“If that’s the case, then you should have no trouble beating me,” Lance challenges.

Keith pauses to squint up at him, considering. Lance raises an eyebrow. Then Keith quickly returns to stringing lights across the armchairs at twice the speed. “You’re going down.”

Lance snorts and bounds up the rest of the stairs to work on the railing of the balcony. Keith drapes some lights over the couch that Adam is sitting on and slows as he gets closer to him. He’s carefully looping them around one of Adam’s arms and across his chest when Lance comes back down the stairs for more lights.

Lance stifles a laugh as Keith very loosely wraps part of the strand around Adam’s neck and into his lap. “We should put a star on his head.”

“If you can find one,” Keith shrugs, looping a few more lights around Adam’s other arm before continuing across the couch.

“Wait.” Lance’s eyes light up and he grins. “I’ll be right back.”

He dashes up the stairs as Keith grabs another string out of one of the boxes, and only a moment later he returns with a decent-sized wreath in his arms. Keith looks up as he comes to a stop in front of Adam on the couch and huffs a quiet laugh. “That’ll work.”

Lance studies Adam for a minute as Keith connects the next strand of lights and stretches it across to the next couch. He glances up in time to watch Lance carefully lower the wreath over Adam’s head and gingerly settle it on his shoulders. He holds his breath as he slowly steps away, his hands still held out as if to snatch it back if Adam wakes up. Adam just snores.

“Dude,” Lance breathes, and Keith huffs another laugh. “Seriously, even Hunk isn’t this unresponsive when he’s asleep.”

“Adam could sleep through the apocalypse.” Keith comes to stand behind Adam again and leans over to look at him. “Watch this.” Lance squeaks as he pokes Adam’s forehead. He doesn’t wake up.

“Keith—” Lance hides his laughter underneath the collar of his sweater as Keith pokes Adam again. “Stop, you’re gonna wake him up—”

They both freeze at the sound of wood creaking from the stairs and twist around to see Pidge staring down at them over the railing. They all blink at each other. Pidge squints. “What are you guys doing?”

“Uh,” Lance glances at Keith, then back at Pidge. “Redecorating?”

She squints some more. Lance shoots her a hopeful smile. Then she shakes her head, turns, and disappears back up the stairs muttering something Keith doesn’t quite catch about them being weirdos, which—is fair.

Lance turns back to Keith with a grin and shushes him when he starts snickering. “Hurry up, we gotta finish before anyone else comes down here.”

They both leap back into action. They string lights across the walls and through the railing and over every single piece of furniture in the room as quickly as they can. Keith readjusts some of the lights around Adam so that they decorate the wreath around his neck, and Lance tosses the end of the strand on the balcony over the side so he can connect it to one of the strands draped over the fireplace.

“That’s four strands for me,” Lance smiles proudly as he reaches the bottom of the stairs again, planting his hands on his hips.

“That’s nice,” Keith shrugs, bending over the last box and reaching inside. “Because this one makes five for me, and it _looks_ like—” He straightens and smirks at Lance as he holds up the last roll of lights, and Lance’s smug smile falters. “It’s the last one.”

Lance drops his head back with a groan. “Oh, come on! I was the one running up and down the stairs the whole time, and you only beat me by one strand.”

“Stop whining,” Keith snorts, stringing the rest of the lights haphazardly across the coffee table. “Turn off the light. I’ll let you plug these in.” He smiles to himself as Lance’s eyes light up again and he dashes over to the light switch at the front of the room.

He flicks it off and plunges the room into darkness as Keith connects the last strand and comes back around to stand next to him. “Ready?”

Keith hands him the end of the lights. “Light it up.”

Lance stifles a giggle and takes it from his hand. “That was probably the dorkiest thing you’ve ever said, but okay.” And then he plugs in the lights before Keith can protest, and the room erupts with a dazzling burst of color.

Keith folds his arms and smiles in satisfaction as Lance gasps excitedly, his eyes flicking around the room to take it all in. _“Nice._ I didn’t expect it to look this good.”

“I told you,” Keith shrugs. “Pranking Adam is super serious.”

He watches (okay—stares) as Lance peers up at all of the lights strung everywhere around them, casting shadows across the floor and glowing softly but brightly enough to illuminate the contented smile on Lance’s face that makes Keith wonder if it’s really the lights that are making the room seem so bright. His own smile falters a little. He suddenly feels a sort of tug in his chest and it’s a little unsettling but not necessarily all that unfamiliar; and he thinks he knows what it is because he’s felt it a million times before but this time seems—different.

And then he’s panicking a little bit, because he definitely can’t hide from what that feeling means anymore because it’s so glaringly obvious and apparently everyone already knew except for him because he just didn’t want to admit it—

He starts a little when Lance slings his arm around his shoulders and grins. “We’re actually super amazing at this. Told you we’re a good team.”

Keith somehow manages not to implode on the spot from the sudden close contact. He swallows. “Uh—yeah.”

His heart flutters nervously when Lance ducks his head and laughs into his shoulder. “Adam’s gonna be so annoyed.”

Keith tries not to focus too much on the weight of Lance’s head on his shoulder and his hair tickling his neck and the warmth of his arm across his back.

 _You should tell him,_ his brain seems to murmur. _You could tell him right now._

He clears his throat and blinks down at his feet. “I think it’ll be worth it.”

They both jump and Lance’s arm quickly slips from his shoulders when there’s another creak of wood and they both turn again to see—Shiro, this time, blinking down at them from the stairs.

His eyes trail around the room, fall on Adam, and then back on Lance and Keith still standing awkwardly at the bottom of the stairs.

“I can explain—” Keith starts.

“You guys pranked Adam _without_ me?”

Lance slaps a hand over his mouth to muffle his laughter as Keith holds his hands up with a shrugging motion. “Sorry?”

 

❆ ❆ ❆

 

 **Adam W. > Keith K** and **lancey lance**  
December 6th, 7:32 PM

 **Adam W:** very funny you two

 **Keith K:** i don’t know what you’re talking about

 **lancey lance:** told you he’d know it was us

 **Keith K:** know what was us

 **lancey lance:** i mean  
adam i don’t know what you’re talking about

 **Adam W:** keith you are a terrible influence

 **Keith K:** thank you

 

❆ ❆ ❆

 

 **lancey lance > Keith K**  
December 5th, 11:55 PM

 **lancey lance:** hey come to the library

 **Keith K:** why do you always text me this late at night

 **lancey lance:** because i always know ur still awake duh

 **Keith K:** …

 **lancey lance:** are u coming

 **Keith K:** i’m coming

  
Lance is plugging in a strand of lights that he’s strung around the window underneath the ledge when Keith walks in, quietly closing the door behind him.

“Wait.” Keith squints as Lance hops back to the floor, looking pleased with himself. “Where did you get those?”

Lance grins and sits down on the cushion, settling himself against the wall. “I may very possibly have borrowed them from one of the boxes earlier.”

Keith stares at him. “You mean I only won the competition because you stole one of the strings?”

“It was the only normal strand!” Lance says in defense as Keith walks across the floor to flop down beside him. “I thought they would look nice in the library. The funky colored lights are fun to look at, but the regular warm-colored lights feel better.”

“They _feel_ better?” Keith raises an eyebrow, leaning back against the other side of the wall.

Lance bats at his knees with a pillow. “You know what I mean! The aesthetic is all warm and cozy.”

“The aesthetic,” Keith repeats amusedly. He snickers as Lance bats at him again. “Okay okay, I get it. Why’d you text me again?”

“I was bored,” Lance shrugs, hugging the pillow to his chest.

Keith pokes one of his knees with a foot. “So you asked _me_ to come in here?”

“Why is that so surprising to you?” Lance pokes him back. “I like hanging out with you.”

And the way he says it is so calm, so effortless and maybe the slightest bit softer than normal that Keith’s heart flips and he finds himself staring at Lance (which, okay, seems to be a common occurrence but still). “Oh.”

Lance just smiles at him, like maybe he’s waiting for some other kind of response. _Uh, hello?_ His brain squawks at him. _Say something else say something else say something else—_

“Well—” Keith fumbles a little with his words. “I like hanging out with you too.”

It seems like that was the right thing to say, because Lance’s smile grows a little at that and he shrugs again. “I mean, obviously. You wouldn’t be here right now if you didn’t, would you?”

Keith blinks. “I, uh—I guess not.” Well then. Is he really that obvious?

Lance pokes his knee again. “Adam’s probably gonna make us put all the lights up on the house tomorrow by ourselves.”

“Probably,” Keith says, and he can’t help but smile when Lance giggles.

“You were right, though. It was worth it.”

That same feeling from earlier comes back, and Keith tucks his knees a little further into his chest as if he’s afraid it’ll burst out if he gets too close to Lance and he hates the irony of it because the reality of it all is that he _wants_ to be close to Lance, all the time.

 _You should tell him that,_ his brain murmurs again. 

He doesn't.

“Yeah,” is all he says instead, resting his chin on his knees as Lance smiles again and his heart skips a beat. “Worth it.”

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on [tumblr](https://www.taxashi.tumblr.com)!  
> 


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